Illegal miners return home

MSCI’s emerging stock benchmark slipped 0.2 percent, with heavyweight South Korea falling 0.4 percent, while bourses elsewhere in Asia, Turkey and parts of emerging Europe also suffered losses.

“There are worries about the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) and Qatar and how that will play out… It’s a geopolitical oil story that has created very much a risk off sentiment,” said Per Hammarlund at SEB.

“In the UK, people are sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see how this will pan out if you have an acrimonious Brexit that will hurt the central and eastern European countries, and it could hurt the EU too, so it has wider ramifications.”

Markets in the Gulf remained under some pressure after US President Donald Trump supported Saudi Arabia against Qatar.

Qatar’s stock exchange fell 0.3 percent, having tumbled nearly 9 percent over the last two days.

Doha’s dollar-denominated debt edged lower across the curve, with some issues trading at their weakest in around 2½ months. Soft start DOZENS of Chinese nationals who had been held for illegal mining in Zambia have departed the country to return home, China’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday. China had complained that Zambia provided no strong evidence of crimes committed by the 31 arrested in the town of Chingola, including a pregnant woman and two victims of malaria. But Zambia’s immigration chief had told Zambian media the Chinese would have to be deported for violating the law. “After repeated representations by China’s Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Zambia, on the afternoon of June 6, the 31 Chinese citizens that had been seized and detained boarded a plane and left Zambia smoothly to return home,” ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said. – Reuters DRC